This is both hilarious and depressing: "In practice, however, literature professors are mostly conventional, cautious bureaucrats who value and reward temperance, dedication, consistency, and hard work."
I recognize so much in this essay, particularly the sense that I was breaking the usual rules of the working world, enjoying "some kind of paradise." I now see it much differently. I finished my PhD in 3.5 years at the age of 29, weathered a crushing first year "on the market," and landed a visiting position that turned into a tenure-track role. Once on the tenure track, I advanced quickly to full rank (~8 years). So in that sense I made it.
But what looked like paradise to me in my 20s, when I enjoyed things like backpacking around Europe or the Idaho wilderness, looked differently to me in my 40s, when I was raising a family. By the time someone completes a PhD, they've already sacrificed a considerable amount of earnings and retirement savings. You never really get that back. When I resigned my position at age 46, my annual salary was about the same as the starting salary for a personal banker. By that time I also had three kids (not part of my plan in grad school). When you start thinking about how you'll pay for your kids' college education, the whole thing looks even less satisfying.
You're not asking for advice, but I'll give it anyway. If I were in your position, preparing to graduate in May, almost assuredly applying to every job in sight with very little likelihood of landing more than a lectureship the first year, I would also spend some time thinking about non-academic roles, networking on LinkedIn, maybe even working with a career coach specializing in transitioning PhDs. Carve out time to plan your exit, because you'll need it.
Happy to share any of the interviews I've done with former academics, if that would help. If you can't hear the urgency in this statement, I sure do: "While I’ve picked up some marketable skills, I do not really know how I will transform those marketable skills into rent payments upon my graduation."
Oh, I'm doing plenty of exit planning--it's just that none of the really viable exit plans include me monetizing the skills that I have really focused on in the PhD. (close reading, archive plumbing, etc. skills.) If anything, the teaching and public speaking skills, as well as general research skills, are probably the most marketable, but a lot of the extra-academia professionalization I've done has been completely optional, not baked into the structure of the degree at all. I certainly do not expect to get a tenure-track position! That would be like planning to win the lottery.
I would love to see some of the interviews with former academics, if you don't mind taking the time!
This was sooooo fun to read. You have a great writing style. I’m hearing back from PhDs in the spring and have mostly heard this stuff but you made it so concise and logical and informative. Good luck and I’m excited to read your dissertation if you post it here.
I appreciate the compliment--thank you! Good luck on the admissions cycle. I would be interested to hear about how your admissions process goes--or, if you remember any of this a year from now, how your experience compares with mine.
I enjoyed this! Has confirmed my intuition that PhD programs in literature are _much_ more work than MFA programs in Creative Writing. For our MFA, we read one (rather short) book a week, did a three-hour workshop, taught a single class, and had the rest of our time to ourselves. Extremely idyllic. Also for a $22k stipend.
Thanks for reading! I suppose I think about MFAs as institutionally supported writing fellowships rather than traditional degrees, where having a lot of free time, ability to pursue one's own interests and write, etc. If you haven't already, you might be interested in reading Elif Batuman's "Get a Real Degree," which compares the two. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n18/elif-batuman/get-a-real-degree If I remember correctly her primary criticism of the MFA is that it doesn't give students a real historical grounding in literature, and this leads lots of MFA students to write novels that don't reflect on or intervene in literary history itself, for Batuman a generic requirement of the novel.
I've read that essay! I just don't think you need a PhD (as Batuman has) or really any academic training at all in order to have the relationship with literature that an artist requires.
MFAs have greater or lesser pretensions to rigor. What I dislike about them is they tend to take the work of program era writers much too seriously. So if you're in an MFA you'll hear a lot about Flannery O Connor and Raymond Carver, much less about, say, Hemingway (much less British or 19th century writers)
I really appreciate you making this post! I've spent a lot of time this year meeting with my TAs and other PhD students in my university's English department to get a better idea of what a PhD in literature would look like. I know it's not going to make me much money. My father has a PhD in biology and became a full-time researcher, and it is for those reasons that my university offers me almost a full-ride—we are just that poor because my dad still barely makes more than most entry-level jobs today. I don't fault my dad for his decision. I used to, and it pushed me away from wanting to ever pursue grad school. I know I will make far more money if I work for a few years first—so I am hoping to do that once I leave undergrad in May. Perhaps that money will be a small nest egg for grad school, or it will drag me out of my PhD reverie. Either way, it seems like a good next step for now.
I also worked outside of academia for a while before enrolling, and I think it's a great idea. You can get an idea of what kind of writing and reading you can do outside of academia, here on Substack or elsewhere. You'll also have more normal ideas of what level of dedication and sheer work ought to be necessary to maintain a career. Good luck, and congrats on graduating!! What an accomplishment.
History PhDs follow a similar pattern with many trips to archives away from home and of course presenting at conferences. $$$. The doctorate takes 7-13 years depending on the humanities discipline. I did my second MA and PhD together in five years while teaching three classes a semester as a teaching assistant. It is grueling. History doctorate candidates read the canon for their general field which was over 300 books for US history, my area. Students specialize in one major field and two minor fields. Research areas often are related. My dissertation was over 300 pages - typical. Would I do it again? No.
Thanks for taking the time to write this. Did you receive any training in teaching techniques before you started being in front of a class? After you started teaching, did any of the more senior faculty observe any of your class sessions and provide any feedback?
No, teaching training was concurrent with my first class. I've gotten a good amount of training, feedback, and instruction, including two courses, multiple required (and a few optional) observations, and so on. The teaching training's not bad, although of course I have my ideas about how it might be improved.
I can answer this. As a History PhD, I never formally learned how to teach or was observed. A few colleges have future faculty programs where PhD candidates learn syllabus construction , grant writing, and related activities but not how to teach. Like the med school adage re surgery , you learn to teach by ‘watching one, doing one , teaching someone to do it !
What do you make of the political environment? Liza wrote an interesting piece on her undergrad experience at Columbia (https://www.pensandpoison.org/p/leave-literature-alone). Wondering if it’s as politically charged at the PHD level, if it’s limiting in any way, etc
I disagree with the broader point Libes raises there--wrote a post about it a while ago, in fact--but to your question, I don't recognize any of the issues that Libes discusses, although I do acknowledge that a certain variety of left politics are the norm for humanities departments. But there is still plenty of political variety and disagreement within the discipline!
This isn't to say that Libes did not have those experiences, of course--just that I have not seen them myself. If someone wanted to write a narratological or structuralist reading of a particular text, they would not be chided--in my class or, I think, in any of the classes I've taken--for failing to voice a particular political perspective.
When I think of "well read," I suppose I think of someone who has read a decent number of the "Great Books"--influential, canonical type texts. In literature, this might mean having read some of the following authors, none of whom were required reading for my PhD coursework: Shakespeare, Joyce, Tolstoy, any of the ancient Greeks, Faulkner, Morrison, Proust, Borges, Dante, Woolf, Cervantes, Pynchon, Chaucer, etc. Instead, I have read books that are much more germane to my area of study or my professors' area of study, which usually entails diving into more obscure works. So I've spent a lot of time with authors like EDEN Southworth, or lesser-read works by canonical authors (Melville's Redburn, for example). The result is that I've got a decently solid grasp on the nineteenth century U.S., but insofar as I am "well read" in the sense of "familiar with the most influential or canonical works," it's because of my other degrees or my own reading.
Wouldn't most students end up reading much of the canon regardless - I suppose, to improve their general understanding of 'literature', kind of like how by reading any philosopher you sort of stumble into the rest of them?
This depends largely on the individual. It is by no means built into a PhD program. In fact, urgency about carving out an original research agenda often trumps this kind of breadth.
Yep. Plus just the constant 60-hour grind in the first few years makes it difficult. After an intense day of reading, most people would rather spend their free time exercising, being with family members, etc. rather than doing more reading. Even if you love books!
That's a good point. It's weird how advanced education peels off into different directions rather than unifies. Granted the 19th century was engaged in older texts like the Bible etc, how did all that fit into your studies? Do yall have a typical way you engage influences? I was also curious since 19th century was very romantic and in between modernism and the enlightenment. Is there any top down approach from that? How are the works decided upon?
It varies widely by program--the lists are where a lot of that background reading happen, and those vary widely by institution. I had the blessing (?) of growing up Christian, and was able to take a graduate course called The Bible As Literature. But lots of nineteenth century Americans, for example, modeled their own prose after 18th century English writers, and I haven't done so much of that. There is, after all, only so much that one can read, and since my scholarship isn't exactly genealogical, I don't do as much of that. Given infinite time and money, I certainly would, though.
Can I ask what are some prose forms (which i assume you mean) that were copied?
Idk if it's genealogical. I get your point that it can't be that but obviously you're trying to understand some core aspect of 19th century American literature. How do you define that? How do you strive to capture that spirit maybe or essence? For a side note, I take the bible to be the essence of Melville and probably Hawthorne right?
Well, the way my research has gone, I don't focus so much on understanding a core aspect of American literature. Instead, I start with a question or problem and try to discover the answer. That should entail understanding core aspects of American literature, but that's not what I'd call the main point of conducting research. So, for example, my research focuses on the question of why so many readers believe that heavy-handed political novels are bad. So to find the answer to that question, I've done a lot of work trying to read lots of heavy-handed political novels and trying to think about the relationship between politics and the novel. I think of my research more as telling a historical story rather than capturing an essence--although I have an enormous amount of respect for scholarship that does this.
That doesn't make sense to me. I don't see how you can answer that without referring to an essence there. It's like studying a book without knowing its theme.
This was really insightful — thank you. I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a humanities PhD, but in the social sciences. Starting a subject has sparked an interest in a subject that I wish to deepen. My biggest concern is that I don’t know that I can read 4 books a week every week. But the writing part sounds nice, and teaching sounds rewarding. I ultimately may not go through with it, but I really appreciate having a sense of the true experience!
I'm glad you found some value in it! I will say, though, that the structure, workload, etc. of a PhD changes a lot depending on the discipline and on the methodological approach you take within that discipline. So a lot of this is not applicable, say, to a PhD in archaeology or psychology, especially if you end up doing more quantitative research. So I'd definitely recommend emailing students in the discipline you're interested in to ask them what it's really like.
(Also, I ended up cutting this paragraph from the final draft, but basically nobody completely finishes all 4 books in a week--the real skill you learn is either reading strategically or pretending to have read 4 books in a week, and there is generally a tacit understanding that few if any students finish 100% of the assigned reading 100% of the time.)
This is a form of dishonesty that troubled me deeply as a graduate student. It also violated my sense of what reading was for. It is a good illustration of how the professionalization of higher ed has undermined the core mission. Posing as an expert rather than actually being one.
This is both hilarious and depressing: "In practice, however, literature professors are mostly conventional, cautious bureaucrats who value and reward temperance, dedication, consistency, and hard work."
I recognize so much in this essay, particularly the sense that I was breaking the usual rules of the working world, enjoying "some kind of paradise." I now see it much differently. I finished my PhD in 3.5 years at the age of 29, weathered a crushing first year "on the market," and landed a visiting position that turned into a tenure-track role. Once on the tenure track, I advanced quickly to full rank (~8 years). So in that sense I made it.
But what looked like paradise to me in my 20s, when I enjoyed things like backpacking around Europe or the Idaho wilderness, looked differently to me in my 40s, when I was raising a family. By the time someone completes a PhD, they've already sacrificed a considerable amount of earnings and retirement savings. You never really get that back. When I resigned my position at age 46, my annual salary was about the same as the starting salary for a personal banker. By that time I also had three kids (not part of my plan in grad school). When you start thinking about how you'll pay for your kids' college education, the whole thing looks even less satisfying.
You're not asking for advice, but I'll give it anyway. If I were in your position, preparing to graduate in May, almost assuredly applying to every job in sight with very little likelihood of landing more than a lectureship the first year, I would also spend some time thinking about non-academic roles, networking on LinkedIn, maybe even working with a career coach specializing in transitioning PhDs. Carve out time to plan your exit, because you'll need it.
Happy to share any of the interviews I've done with former academics, if that would help. If you can't hear the urgency in this statement, I sure do: "While I’ve picked up some marketable skills, I do not really know how I will transform those marketable skills into rent payments upon my graduation."
Oh, I'm doing plenty of exit planning--it's just that none of the really viable exit plans include me monetizing the skills that I have really focused on in the PhD. (close reading, archive plumbing, etc. skills.) If anything, the teaching and public speaking skills, as well as general research skills, are probably the most marketable, but a lot of the extra-academia professionalization I've done has been completely optional, not baked into the structure of the degree at all. I certainly do not expect to get a tenure-track position! That would be like planning to win the lottery.
I would love to see some of the interviews with former academics, if you don't mind taking the time!
I'll message you directly.
This was sooooo fun to read. You have a great writing style. I’m hearing back from PhDs in the spring and have mostly heard this stuff but you made it so concise and logical and informative. Good luck and I’m excited to read your dissertation if you post it here.
I appreciate the compliment--thank you! Good luck on the admissions cycle. I would be interested to hear about how your admissions process goes--or, if you remember any of this a year from now, how your experience compares with mine.
I enjoyed this! Has confirmed my intuition that PhD programs in literature are _much_ more work than MFA programs in Creative Writing. For our MFA, we read one (rather short) book a week, did a three-hour workshop, taught a single class, and had the rest of our time to ourselves. Extremely idyllic. Also for a $22k stipend.
Thanks for reading! I suppose I think about MFAs as institutionally supported writing fellowships rather than traditional degrees, where having a lot of free time, ability to pursue one's own interests and write, etc. If you haven't already, you might be interested in reading Elif Batuman's "Get a Real Degree," which compares the two. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n18/elif-batuman/get-a-real-degree If I remember correctly her primary criticism of the MFA is that it doesn't give students a real historical grounding in literature, and this leads lots of MFA students to write novels that don't reflect on or intervene in literary history itself, for Batuman a generic requirement of the novel.
I've read that essay! I just don't think you need a PhD (as Batuman has) or really any academic training at all in order to have the relationship with literature that an artist requires.
MFAs have greater or lesser pretensions to rigor. What I dislike about them is they tend to take the work of program era writers much too seriously. So if you're in an MFA you'll hear a lot about Flannery O Connor and Raymond Carver, much less about, say, Hemingway (much less British or 19th century writers)
I really appreciate you making this post! I've spent a lot of time this year meeting with my TAs and other PhD students in my university's English department to get a better idea of what a PhD in literature would look like. I know it's not going to make me much money. My father has a PhD in biology and became a full-time researcher, and it is for those reasons that my university offers me almost a full-ride—we are just that poor because my dad still barely makes more than most entry-level jobs today. I don't fault my dad for his decision. I used to, and it pushed me away from wanting to ever pursue grad school. I know I will make far more money if I work for a few years first—so I am hoping to do that once I leave undergrad in May. Perhaps that money will be a small nest egg for grad school, or it will drag me out of my PhD reverie. Either way, it seems like a good next step for now.
I also worked outside of academia for a while before enrolling, and I think it's a great idea. You can get an idea of what kind of writing and reading you can do outside of academia, here on Substack or elsewhere. You'll also have more normal ideas of what level of dedication and sheer work ought to be necessary to maintain a career. Good luck, and congrats on graduating!! What an accomplishment.
History PhDs follow a similar pattern with many trips to archives away from home and of course presenting at conferences. $$$. The doctorate takes 7-13 years depending on the humanities discipline. I did my second MA and PhD together in five years while teaching three classes a semester as a teaching assistant. It is grueling. History doctorate candidates read the canon for their general field which was over 300 books for US history, my area. Students specialize in one major field and two minor fields. Research areas often are related. My dissertation was over 300 pages - typical. Would I do it again? No.
Thanks for taking the time to write this. Did you receive any training in teaching techniques before you started being in front of a class? After you started teaching, did any of the more senior faculty observe any of your class sessions and provide any feedback?
No, teaching training was concurrent with my first class. I've gotten a good amount of training, feedback, and instruction, including two courses, multiple required (and a few optional) observations, and so on. The teaching training's not bad, although of course I have my ideas about how it might be improved.
I can answer this. As a History PhD, I never formally learned how to teach or was observed. A few colleges have future faculty programs where PhD candidates learn syllabus construction , grant writing, and related activities but not how to teach. Like the med school adage re surgery , you learn to teach by ‘watching one, doing one , teaching someone to do it !
What do you make of the political environment? Liza wrote an interesting piece on her undergrad experience at Columbia (https://www.pensandpoison.org/p/leave-literature-alone). Wondering if it’s as politically charged at the PHD level, if it’s limiting in any way, etc
I disagree with the broader point Libes raises there--wrote a post about it a while ago, in fact--but to your question, I don't recognize any of the issues that Libes discusses, although I do acknowledge that a certain variety of left politics are the norm for humanities departments. But there is still plenty of political variety and disagreement within the discipline!
This isn't to say that Libes did not have those experiences, of course--just that I have not seen them myself. If someone wanted to write a narratological or structuralist reading of a particular text, they would not be chided--in my class or, I think, in any of the classes I've taken--for failing to voice a particular political perspective.
Fascinating! Glad you wrote this.
Can you go over what you mean by well-read cf academically read given yousaid 2-3 books a week?
When I think of "well read," I suppose I think of someone who has read a decent number of the "Great Books"--influential, canonical type texts. In literature, this might mean having read some of the following authors, none of whom were required reading for my PhD coursework: Shakespeare, Joyce, Tolstoy, any of the ancient Greeks, Faulkner, Morrison, Proust, Borges, Dante, Woolf, Cervantes, Pynchon, Chaucer, etc. Instead, I have read books that are much more germane to my area of study or my professors' area of study, which usually entails diving into more obscure works. So I've spent a lot of time with authors like EDEN Southworth, or lesser-read works by canonical authors (Melville's Redburn, for example). The result is that I've got a decently solid grasp on the nineteenth century U.S., but insofar as I am "well read" in the sense of "familiar with the most influential or canonical works," it's because of my other degrees or my own reading.
Wouldn't most students end up reading much of the canon regardless - I suppose, to improve their general understanding of 'literature', kind of like how by reading any philosopher you sort of stumble into the rest of them?
This depends largely on the individual. It is by no means built into a PhD program. In fact, urgency about carving out an original research agenda often trumps this kind of breadth.
Yep. Plus just the constant 60-hour grind in the first few years makes it difficult. After an intense day of reading, most people would rather spend their free time exercising, being with family members, etc. rather than doing more reading. Even if you love books!
That's a good point. It's weird how advanced education peels off into different directions rather than unifies. Granted the 19th century was engaged in older texts like the Bible etc, how did all that fit into your studies? Do yall have a typical way you engage influences? I was also curious since 19th century was very romantic and in between modernism and the enlightenment. Is there any top down approach from that? How are the works decided upon?
It varies widely by program--the lists are where a lot of that background reading happen, and those vary widely by institution. I had the blessing (?) of growing up Christian, and was able to take a graduate course called The Bible As Literature. But lots of nineteenth century Americans, for example, modeled their own prose after 18th century English writers, and I haven't done so much of that. There is, after all, only so much that one can read, and since my scholarship isn't exactly genealogical, I don't do as much of that. Given infinite time and money, I certainly would, though.
Yes it's a blessing if you're Christian.
Can I ask what are some prose forms (which i assume you mean) that were copied?
Idk if it's genealogical. I get your point that it can't be that but obviously you're trying to understand some core aspect of 19th century American literature. How do you define that? How do you strive to capture that spirit maybe or essence? For a side note, I take the bible to be the essence of Melville and probably Hawthorne right?
Well, the way my research has gone, I don't focus so much on understanding a core aspect of American literature. Instead, I start with a question or problem and try to discover the answer. That should entail understanding core aspects of American literature, but that's not what I'd call the main point of conducting research. So, for example, my research focuses on the question of why so many readers believe that heavy-handed political novels are bad. So to find the answer to that question, I've done a lot of work trying to read lots of heavy-handed political novels and trying to think about the relationship between politics and the novel. I think of my research more as telling a historical story rather than capturing an essence--although I have an enormous amount of respect for scholarship that does this.
That doesn't make sense to me. I don't see how you can answer that without referring to an essence there. It's like studying a book without knowing its theme.
Really enjoyed "the vibe" section of this!! Never been in a PhD program but it really spoke to my experiences in academia.
This was really insightful — thank you. I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a humanities PhD, but in the social sciences. Starting a subject has sparked an interest in a subject that I wish to deepen. My biggest concern is that I don’t know that I can read 4 books a week every week. But the writing part sounds nice, and teaching sounds rewarding. I ultimately may not go through with it, but I really appreciate having a sense of the true experience!
I'm glad you found some value in it! I will say, though, that the structure, workload, etc. of a PhD changes a lot depending on the discipline and on the methodological approach you take within that discipline. So a lot of this is not applicable, say, to a PhD in archaeology or psychology, especially if you end up doing more quantitative research. So I'd definitely recommend emailing students in the discipline you're interested in to ask them what it's really like.
(Also, I ended up cutting this paragraph from the final draft, but basically nobody completely finishes all 4 books in a week--the real skill you learn is either reading strategically or pretending to have read 4 books in a week, and there is generally a tacit understanding that few if any students finish 100% of the assigned reading 100% of the time.)
This is a form of dishonesty that troubled me deeply as a graduate student. It also violated my sense of what reading was for. It is a good illustration of how the professionalization of higher ed has undermined the core mission. Posing as an expert rather than actually being one.